Cradle on the Water
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: In the summer of '69, Naomi Sandburg must make a decision that shakes her to her very soul. (slash, jb)
1. All Those Things You'd Rather Not See

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AUTHOR'S **NOTES**: First off, I should thank you for taking the time to look at this piece. It's still sort of in progress, but the bulk of it is done and I'm really just tweaking and tying things together. I'm hoping posting the first bit of this will get me out of my little mini-writer's block and back into action. This is my first Sentinel fic (don't run screaming from the room yet!), but not my first slash fic. New fandom... *sniffs* It's the first time all over again. *wink* That said, I hope you enjoy the story, and I would _dearly_ love feedback, should you choose to feed my greedy little muse. *puppy dog eyes*

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DISCLAIMER: Not mine. I think I have to get in line, or something. ^_~

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WARNINGS: Talk of abortion, swear works, het sex (not involving the boys),

m/m sex, ect.

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Cradle on the Water 1/6

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

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They talked about her like she wasn't even there.

Vaguely, Naomi Sandburg knocked the backs of her sandals against the rung of the stool she was perched on-- but all that earned her was a halfhearted 'stop that, dear'. She puffed harshly on her cigarette, eyeing the yellow California day drawing to a close outside the window. At the kitchen table, her mother sat opposite Ms. Goldman ('Aunt Dolores'), the two of them poised fine and brittle over their tea cups, thrusting worried, half-finished sentences at each other. 

"Marriage--" Dolores tried the word, as if it was somehow bitter on her tongue.

Ruth Sandburg shook her careful bob of dark hair, "They're so young."

"And the war." They nodded to each other.

"And---"

"His number came up, Ruthie, dear god--" 

"Hush. Oh, Dorie."

Their hands touched across the table, "What's a mother to do, Ruthie?"

At that, both women turned to acknowledge Naomi for the first time since they'd sat down. The young woman felt the weight of that word-- 'mother'-- on her shoulders like one of Ruth Sandburg's heavy rings. Antiquated. Something she didn't want; but they looked at her like it was her fault, all the same. Funny, no one had batted an eye about where Frank had been sticking his dick. A moment later, Naomi sighed and purposely flicked some ash onto the pristine counter. She didn't want to think unkindly about Frank-- it wasn't his fault that patriarchal ideas about reproduction still prevailed. It wasn't even as if he'd abandoned her to these cronies, either. Naomi tilted her lips briefly, just imagining what her mother would say if she knew there was every possibility that the baby wasn't Frank's. 

"You've nothing to smile about, Naomi," her mother said, not unkindly. Dolores eye's were more firm, gazing over the other woman's shoulders. She couldn't find anything to say to these two women, so removed from her and the slow, lazy days of '69 summer. In a strange way, their panicked, birdlike conversation touched her as much at it angered her; there was something in their eyes that said they knew the slow, wondrous, creeping feeling of not being alone in your own body. 

Slowly, she pushed herself off the stool and came to stand under the blue polka-dotted frame of the curtains. The kitchen spread out around her like a painting, with the lighting just so, and she even had a title for the piece. 'The Price of Womanhood', or something like that.

"What will you _do_, child?" Dolores stressed. The hand held out to comfort seemed somehow also menacing, skin weathered and muscles twisted with age. 

"I don't know," Naomi rolled her shoulders elegantly, elaborately. "I have nine months to figure things out."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Ruth threw her hands up. They fluttered briefly, crazy butterflies in a much smoother contrast to Dolores, before alighting on the edge of the table. 

Maybe I'll scream and cry, Naomi considered. Maybe I'll dash away their precious tea cups, rake the sugar and cream off the table so they splash onto the floor, soaking into their house slippers. The kitchen was too small, the house was too small, the whole goddamn world she'd lived in was too small, any place that wasn't 'just down the corner' consigned to being foreign, unimportant and strange. Even her own body seemed like darkest Africa, illuminated only by the fumbling, inexpert explorations of Frank, and boys, and her own blooming curiosity. She could use her body to have sex, to shit and piss and all those other words her mother didn't like her to use. But what was this thing, this cage of bones, that now held not just one, but two?

_(I'm me and someone else!)_

Queer, queer thought.

"Mom," she said, unaware how much time had passed, "It's my baby. You don't have to worry about it."

For a moment, Ruth opened her too-thin lips, but Dolores had a note high and clear that over rode everything else.

"The things you say!" her honorary aunt muttered, "You're nineteen. Who're you to have a baby? Not married, no job."

"At least," Ruthie said, "You'll not fight with your father about college, anymore."

Naomi huffed, "I can go to college and have a baby if I want to." She paced, mincing on the blue tile work floor, "I'll do whatever I damn well please." 

__

(You will, you already do, and you're paying for it. In for a penny, in for a pound, sweet child of mine.)

"Such a selfish girl," Dolores murmured, having hurried to Ruth's side, holding the other woman delicately against her own sagging breasts. Her voice was the voice inside Naomi, bred into her, saying 'you can't do this' and 'you can't do that'. The voice Naomi smashed ruthlessly (ha ha!), with no thought for the future. And, in this crazy kitchen theater, she wasn't sure who was playing the villain. 

"Oh," Ruth murmured, wilting against her friend like some small china blossom, in many ways unreal. Frowning, Naomi took the scene in, as if trying to match it with her program, find her lines, whatever would get her out of here, and fast. It was a strange tableau, intimate and blasphemous in ways she couldn't put her finger on, until Dolores pressed a kiss unto Ruth's dark, curly hair. 

_(No.)_

"This discussion isn't over," Ruth murmured, a princess in a fortress of flesh and blood arms. God, but Naomi had seen this before, in her childhood; Mother and Father, voices raised— or the Goldman's next door, women in each other's kitchens. I know your problems, love, I know. 

"It isn't." Dolores agreed. Blocked on both sides by Queens, check annnnd mate!

Naomi screwed up her courage and smiled anyway, saying, "I'd imagine not."

She would have flounced upstairs, really she would have— even if she didn't know what she was thinking or feeling, taking oppositional stance because it was her nature and her habit, her unconscious breath or air. 

Except.

"Come see me out, Naomi," Dolores asked, just a little laced with sugar to hide fact of command. Slowly, Naomi pressed the butt of her cigarette into the tiny, crystal ash tray her mother left on the kitchen table. Somehow, she couldn't breathe-- she was fumbling for another cigarette and her lighter, even as she moved across the tiled floor. "Filthy habit," the older woman said, in a curious echo of Naomi's mother.

"I keep telling her to stop," Ruth Sandburg shook her head, dark curls coming to cluster over her face like a haphazard veil. 

"Children never listen," Dolores sympathized, taking Naomi by the arm with one fleshy, sapphire-ringed hand. The younger girl felt curiously insubstantial, as if the house lights had already dimmed, save for the spotlight on poor, darling Ruthie, who only ever tried to do right by her daughter. By God. 

_(maybe I don't feel for them, after all)_

It was Dolores tightening grip that brought Naomi back to reality-- to the sunset-lit, cramped porch with it's flaking white paint. Out in the natural light, Dolores seemed a little smaller, long brown braid swaying, illuminating the silver that riddled the plait. Across the lawn, the Goldman yard was pristine, save for the red bicycle abandoned in the grass, wheel spinning. Tick, tick, tick.

"Listen to me, Naomi," the older woman said, jutting her face up as if she wished to peer right down inside Naomi's pupils. "You just listen to me." She held up one peach-painted nail, even as the younger woman's lips parted. "You talk, allathe time. Now you can just use your ears for a change."

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(I talk and I talk because no one listens. Damn you, living here, on this street since you were born, since you flushed out between your mother's legs on the very same couch Frank and I made out on before we got down to doing It. Blah, blah. I might as well be speaking Chinese.)

Nodding slowly, the redhead fished in the pockets of her smock, finally coming up with a lighter and a long, ivory stick of nicotine. It felt sort of elegant to snap the rose-patterned Bic. 

"Oh, fine," Dolores rolled her eyes, still standing nose to nose with the younger generation, even with the smoke drifting around her face. "Child, I don't know what got into you and Frank. I just-- I just don't know. But, no matter now. What's done is done, and not I, nor Frank nor you can take that back. I just wish you'd have thought of your mother. But I suspect you had other things on your mind that night. Was it when Mister Goldman and I took off for Vegas? Was that it? Or while I was at the bridge club, hmmm? No matter." She took a fresh breath while Naomi watched the words drop out of the aged, but oddly pretty mouth. Those eyes when suddenly a hawk-like green, more yellow and lime than anything, and Dolores said so softly, "I love Ruthie. God knows that I do. And this, this'll break her heart."

_(Yes, on this very same street, all their lives. Ruthie Baitman and Dorie Greenburg, born just six days apart. What a talisman, that number! Diapers hung side by side on the line, matching laced panties-- blue for Dorie, green for Ruthie. In their grammar school photo, side by side in braids. Almost like twins. High school has curls clustered like a crown, and you know it-- the Foster brothers took them to prom. Always swore they'd marry brothers, just so they could be real sisters, they did.)_

Naomi coughed a little, without meaning to, because there was something in those words that didn't mesh right with anything she'd ever expected to hear. 

_("I love Ruthie."_

A warm, warm summer night, out on the moon-strewn lawn. Fireflies, same ones Mommy used to help me catch in a cherry jar.

1936? '37?

Roll over, here's Dolores without the frown lines, without the little limp from her too long pregnancy. Hair spread out on the grass. And Mother, brown-eyed like the most graceful doe, gripping her hand.

"I love you, Ruthie."

Maybe?)

It was just that way, or seemed to be, in those limelight eyes.

"Here's what we're going to do," the old-lady Dolores came back into focus, jaw set, commanding Naomi's complicity. "California passed the law, just a bit back. End of days it means, maybe, but I'm glad of it now. We'll get you an abortion."

It came out so tiny, even though she meant to shout, "What!?"

"An abortion," the graying woman repeated, plopping the word off her tongue as if it tasted bad. Naomi could only stare at the woman, at the wind chimes hanging still and the red bike way out there on the lawn, so surreal.

(Come on, my girl. It's not as if you hadn't thought about it before. Didn't you, darlin', did that word, the 'a' word, come to mind when you were sitting on the toilet at the college's free clinic? Don't play innocent with me.)

"I'll take you into San Jose next week, after I find a place to get the job done. We won't tell your mother. Wait a few weeks-- complain of aches and such. We'll say you had a miscarriage," Dolores' voice became soft, silent as the grave, "Your own mother lost two before you that way, and they say it runs in women. Sad, true, but God in His wisdom took your baby. That's how it'll be. Sad, but best."

"I--" Oh, how thick Naomi's tongue felt! 

"Be a good girl," the other woman pressed down on her shoulders, as if to make her five again. "I won't let anyone hurt your mother, Naomi. Even you."

She was still standing there, long after Dolores had moved painstakingly back to her own, small white house-- until the sky was a bright, beginning-night blue and her mother called out to see what was the matter. Naomi said 'nothing, Ma'

_(nothing!)_

and fisted her hands in her jean pockets with a miserable sort of certainty. 

_(It's out of my hands.)_

Closing her eyes, she thought, 'I can go in right now, tell Mom what she said. Never mind I've thought about it too-- it's that the choice has been taken away from me. A woman's right to decide, and she thinks she can just tell me. I don't owe anyone anything.'

But--

_(Memories upon memories, layered like the fine bridal gown Mother had unfurled from the cedar chest that one, special time. See, Naomi? Your Aunt Dolores and I made this together, on the condition that the first one to get married got to wear it. But it wasn't a race, No-ho. Just fate to decide. Look at the flowers here? Dolores could always stitch better than I._

Holidays at the beach, Ruth and her Naomi, Dolores and her boy Frank (and, later, Jonathan too). Christmases, Mother and Auntie sitting around the table, while Pa and Mr. Goldman listened to the game and said words that made the "womenfolk" roll their eyes. Everywhere, every time-- shopping, cooking, sewing. The girls from 231 and 232 Lilly Road.

Yeah, sure Naomi. Say to your mother, "Your best friend, your sister under the skin, told me she wants me to get an- an--"

How can you tattle if you can't even say it?)

"Damn," Naomi swore faithfully and sat down on the dirt-crusted porch steps, elbows on her knees as she listened to the wind and her own heart howl. 

#*#*#*#*#*#

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

Come on, have pity on a poor, demented slash writer.

Please...? ^_^


	2. At the Fountain

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Cradle on the Water 2/6

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

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When Frank was making love to her, he liked to touch the sides of her breasts, moving upward, and if to lift Naomi up to the sky. She found she enjoyed the feeling, as if she might fly away any minute, arms spread, to some foreign country where she didn't speak the language and the natives peered at her with curious eyes. It was an itch sex just couldn't scratch; the travel bug biting the hometown girl.

_(A joke. Three girls in a five-and-dime._

How can you avoid gettin' a baby?

If you've already a bun in the oven.

ha. ha.)

Frank, with his wide, funny hands, got the closest to soothing that irritated spot. Finally, she shuddered, and his nails dug just slightly into her soft flesh. Sitting back on her haunches, she rolled off of him and closed her eyes, letting the world drift back in around her. The radio warbled, so softly from the window sill, a sad song who's name she could not remember.

'I cry each time, I hear this sound...' 

She said, laying with her cheek on the pillow and utterly without meaning to, "Your mom wants me to get an abortion."

"Guh," Frank murmured, having flopped over onto his belly. One eye peeked open from where his face was buried in a pile of sheets. "What did you say?"

"I _said_," Naomi sat up, watching her twin in the old vanity mirror do the same, "'Your mother wants me to get an abortion'."

"My mother?" the sheets swished with Frank's denial, "My attend-synogog-without-fail, pious, old-world, Jewish Mother? You've lost it."

Naomi rolled her eyes, standing moon-white naked in the middle of the creaking, almost empty attic. "I have not. Frank, she told me today. She said she'll take me into San Jose next week and have it done. Without telling my mother."

"Dude," Frank sputtered, "That's tripp'n."

"You're telling me!" she huffed, sitting back down on the bed to draw first her shocks, then her boots on.

"She wants to kill our--"

"Not _our_, Frank," Naomi was very diplomatic, "_my_. My baby. And no one knows if it's really killing, 'cause no one knows how self-aware fetuses are."

"But still, she thinks it's mine, too," he persisted, "You think so, too." He came up to kiss her neck, like an apologetic priest, while she twisted her hair back up into a sloppy bun. 

"Frank, I wanted you to be the first because you've always been my best friend, but you certainly weren't the last." 

"I know." He spat, offering her his pinky, "Friends forever?"

She spat and shook, "And then some." A sigh escaped her lips, "Besides, you've got your own problems."

"'Nam," Frank laid back down, almost like a child hiding. "Thanks for reminding me."

"Leave tonight," Naomi took his hands, insistent, "Hell, leave tomorrow or even next week. You still have some time before you have to report. Canada or Mexico, take your pick. You could get to either one pretty easily from here."

"I don't know," he sighed to the ceiling, "I mean... I don't want to go. I really don't-- I wake up at night with the shakes about it. But who'm I to think I'm all-fired special that I should get to skip out? It's not cool."

(God knows.)

"War is wrong," she said decisively, pulling her yellow-died dress over her head. 

"Killing is, babe. In any context." 

Briefly, she looked at him, but saw in his sleepy hazel eyes that he had meant nothing by it. Still, as window swung open and she sat with one leg over the sill, poised to reach for that high branch...

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(God knows.)

Well, if you're so smart, God-- tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do! 

#(#)#

Normally, she doesn't dream–not like most people do. When she dreams, it's all stillness, as if she is lying down inside her body, but if she rolled over, then her bones and flesh would stay right where they were. It would be her soul that moved, perhaps falling off the edge of the bed, into the space between the comforter and the peach-blossom wallpaper. Or sometimes, it's like the quiet of a museum, and she stands, motionless, as images are brought before her for careful study. But nothing ever _happens_. 

Except tonight. 

Tonight she is looking at her body, the lithe curves of it under the handmade quilt, how it rests in her single, maidenly bed. Too bad she's outgrown it. And now, she turns, and her bare feet are no longer touching the soft brown carpet; instead they seem to be touching nothing at all. 

But the world, the world is around her, now! The sky is a just-after-the rain gray, wet leaves clustered on the grass and the wind rustles, whistles suggestively through the few brown sheaves still clinging to the trees. Yeah. But though she can smell the exit of the rain, see and hear the evidence of the wind, her naked toes don't feel the concrete path, she can't shiver with the cold. Turning slowly, she takes herself in as well as her surroundings–tall, aristocratic buildings flank her, more modern ones mixed amongst their ranks. Shivering despite of (because of?) her numbness, she feels small, dressed in her white silk nightgown, the one she privately thinks is so sexy, but is embarrassed to wear for any lovers. Without meaning to, she moves out of the structured shadows and down the path, to where the sign says–(don't look!)–and she can hear a fountain splash a little ways away. If it's raining again, she can't feel it, but she thinks it might be because the sign is all running together like watercolor and she leans forward and it says..

Rainier.

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(Someday, you'll be sitting here in a battered brown station wagon, with your son

//son!?// 

bouncing eagerly in the passenger seat, book-bag clutched like an eager lover. I'm alright, Mom, he'll say, so fresh faced, so like a cherub, blue eyes too bright to be any sky you've seen. I'll see you soon, this is so cool I can't fucking _wait_! And you don't correct him because you believe 'fuck' is just another word and if he wants to use it, well fine. And you'll kiss him on the cheek, his soft, still-baby skin cheek, and he'll walk towards the registrars office with barely a look back at you. You'll be thinking about the airport, and how you'll be going to Berlin for the fall season, not worried at all, until you see the sign, the sign your son will walk by a thousand times. Damn it all, you've read the name before, too, on his application papers, on his requests for scholarships and loans but---

But the sign says, 'Rainier'.

And your heart is in your throat.)

Within her dream, Naomi Sandburg frowns; faltering, uncertain. The sign, or her vision, seems to have cleared, and she can read the word clearly, the golden curve of the 'r'. The panic falls away and she thinks, 'oh, is that all.'

The sound of the fountain is louder.

She walks a little further– no conscious destination, just meandering, waiting for what she will be presented with next. After a while, the path slopes down a hill, towards another cluster of buildings, and she can see the decorative fountain, students clustered around to–

No.

There's an ambulance parked haphazardly, half in the street and half on the sidewalk; she can see the medics clustered just off to one side. Someone says, very loudly, 'NO!', with a voice of pain like she's never heard before. Suddenly, she is running, down the hill, stumbling a little, which doesn't hurt at all. At the bottom, she's breathing hard, though; words come from a voice and the voice comes from the mouth of the man just lifting his from the victim's. 

"Come on, Chief."

"It's too late!" says someone in the crowd, but their faces are shadowed when Naomi flickers her glance up.

"No!" The man is holding on tight, his knuckles white as the bone underneath his skin; he holds on like he doesn't know or remember _why_ he won't let go, only that he shouldn't. "This isn't over!" And soft, so soft, his mouth doesn't seem to move at all, he says a name Naomi hears, but a second later can not remember. Then, louder, "Come on, Sandburg!"

Startled, she takes a step back, suspended in a world defined by three of her senses. She feels the division between herself and the scene like a pane of glass so perfectly crafted; translucent, but unable to give. 

It's a chant now, the tone going out of the man's voice with desperation; "Sandburg, Sandburg, _please_. Come on! Sandburg!"

"What do you want!?" Naomi cries, angry, frustrated, feeling this man's sadness as it tumbles away from him in waves. Not just sadness, but a loss of life, as if there was something so vital, so precious, that he could not store it within himself. As if is he who is dying, or perhaps already dead. Though it is the first time she has spoken in the dream, the blinding flash of his focused gaze stuns her. She herself is transparent–he doesn't see her, no, but in a way he does. 

The dream sees her, this dream that she is in, through his eyes, and it says, "Don't do this to me, Sandburg."

She opens her mouth to protest, to deny or question, but in one instant she is abruptly able to feel, the cold, the pain, water closing around

_(flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood)_

until breathing is just a dream and that's death, which comes not for one person, but for both the man and the body he cradles with such tender, persuasive love; as if to say, "come back, please come back".

And Naomi wakes up coughing in the middle of the night.

#(#)#

Coming awake was startling and strange, as if she had just been unceremoniously shoved back into a jumble of flesh and bones–a puppet–and expected to use the limbs, to pull the strings. In the darkness, she couldn't see the pink, child-princess clock sitting on her dresser, but the air tasted like something after midnight, and the moon's pale curve shone through the branches and her window to make intimidating shadows on the floor. Down the hall, her parents would be sleeping side by side, laid out like corpses, not touching. Naomi breathed out, as loudly as she dared, simply to ground herself in the here and now. Scrambling out of her sheets with lanky un-grace, she came to rest herself on the window seat, fingers curled against the window pane.

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("Don't do this to me, Sandburg!"

A shadow from the crowd, "It's too late.")

All at once, she rose up on her knees, drawing the glass casement down, so that the night world was open to her. Leaning out the window, she could see across the lawn to the room where Frank slept, disturbed by his own dreams of tickets reading "Hanoi" and "Saigon". For the first time, she was really aware that there was a little little _thing_ inside of her, curled up, and thing that would be a baby with a few more months work. A tiny human with five fingers on each hand (God willing), and two little arms, and eyes and a mouth and Why, he/she would be everything in miniature, so perfectly crafted, a thumbnail of who he or

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(He. You shall have a boy-child and his name will be

--Don't leave me, Blair!–

She heard it and she didn't. It hurt her ears.)

would be. Naomi wavered desperately against the glass, feeling sick. Pushing out further into the cool night air, the strap of her nightgown fell off her shoulder, and she suddenly laughed to think how she must look–breasts heavy and naked and pale in the summer moonlight. And and looking up, there was an apple suspended near her mouth, a breath or so away. The summer's last, a left over, so ripe and round and red that it could not be healthy, and in the night colors it was violet and full like a heart.

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(My dear, your skin so pale as snow. Sweetheart, have an apple, sweet like your heart. Take it from my old, boney hands.)

Annoyance flickered in Naomi's breast, along with disquiet, and she drew back into the safety of her room, drawing her knees up protectively. 

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(Killing is wrong, in any form, babe.)

(It's not even my choice!)

So clearly, she could see the look on Dolores eye's, that copper-gilded protectiveness, like a woman with her sword raised high towards the dawn. And also, the man, weeping without tears, foundering, calling for Sandburg (who?) to take it back, to make it Not So.

__

("I won't let anyone hurt my.. //ruthie, blair, beloved, guide//.. not even you.")

Suspended between some middle-of-the-night point in time and dawn, Naomi curled up on the window sill, and fell into the sort of dreams she was all too accustomed to. 


	3. The Long Drive

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Cradle on the Water 3/6

by Meredith Bronwen Tuesday morning found Naomi standing on the curb on 231 Lilly Road, a small purse clutched in her hands and no breakfast on her stomach. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dolores settling herself into the Goldman family Plymouth, but the younger girl stayed where she was, letting her mother's friend pull out of the drive and past the mailbox. 

"Well?" Dolores reached over and thrust the door open so that it narrowly missed Naomi's knees. "Come on, get in. We don't have all morning." Without a word, Naomi folded herself into the passenger seat, escaping the faint smell of her mother's cooking for the too-fresh pine of the car. Her stomach turned as if on a double axis. "I couldn't find a place in San Jose. We'll have to go all the way into San Francisco. I hope you're ready for a long drive." As if it was the girl's fault.

"I'll be alright," Naomi insisted, when only nodding produced a frown in response.

"I'll turn on the radio," Dolores nodded to herself, as if a hostess at some family gathering, mediating between warring tribes. Too bright, too cheery, that voice. For a minute or two, she fumbled for reception, looking for anything that wasn't rock 'n roll. In the small confines of the car, Ella Fitzgerald sounded tinny, time-warpish, straight out of the fifties like some shadow that refused go away. 

" got you, deep in the heart of me"

So deep in my heart–Naomi knew the words by heart, could hear their ghost from her mother's record player–you're really a part of me. When Mother played it at home, Naomi would sometimes creep up to the turn table, jumping the needle when Miss Fitzgerald sang 'repeats and repeats' some six or seven times, before her hand was slapped away. 

_(Don't you know, little fool, you never can win.)_

The image made Naomi smile and almost laugh–behavior that seemed inappropriate, as if she had come dressed gaily to a funeral. 

Gradually, familiar landmarks gave way to only the dusty, red and cactus-green California highway, and Ella smoothed into Frank Sinatra, into Glen Miller–though they were all overridden by Dolores commentary on the drivers around her. Naomi laid her cheek against the grubby window, letting the motion of the Plymouth rock her until it seemed she had been set adrift at sea. 

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(She's in the jungle, dense leaves and ferns rising up as if to defend against her. The jungle is green by the world is blue, the sun on some acid-trip high, wavering and given to moments of frailty. She turns and turns, following sounds that seem to echo from everywhere, and she is dizzy with trying to take in what is all around her. There–in the under brush, a hunter of some kind. First man, then sleek, midnight cat, eyes like this dream's impossible blue sun. The man again, face hidden by war paint (but–is that camouflage he's wearing?). He pays her no heed as he comes to kneel by a form previously sheltered by the ferns. As with the last dream, she can move without a sound, without feeling the dead leaves and branches littering the ground; the man is now a cat, licking tenderly at this patch of silver gray fur. A wolf in the jungle! Naomi's laugh makes no sound; dreams make no sense of course, and oh, if she only believed that. If she could foist off this dream as illogical and irrelevant–but she sees the panther become a man, become tender with his precious bundle of wolf-boy, lifting, cooing gently. Strange, strange. The air seems to close around her, a thousand ghosts and spirits at her shoulders, urging. Listen, listen to _me_, because--)

"Naomi!" Dolores lifted one hand from the steering wheel, briefly, to give the girl's bare arm a slight pinch.

"-that's when the lady's in love!" the radio advised, all too loud as Naomi struggled to consciousness. Blinking, eyes bleary, she stretched her arms as much as the low roof would allow and looked around her with something just short of relief. 

"Yes?" she asked finally, seeing that they were stopped in traffic, the line snaking between a canyon of skyscrapers.

"We're almost there," the older woman pointed out dryly, dragging her purse into her lap. Waiting for the next red light, she began rummaging with a ruthless sort of nonchalance. Naomi turned away, only to have her shoulder tapped, a wad of green bills thrust at her like something rooted in disease. 

_(Have an apple, my dear.)_

"Money," Dolores said, with an impatience aimed not at any one person, but at existence, "for the procedure." Naomi thought it quite bizarre that it hadn't occurred to her at all that this deed would need to be paid for in cash. This is America, she thought at herself, of course you have to pay for it. Everything costs something, here. Cautiously, she took the bills, folding them neatly; one, two, three, four, five hundred dollars.

"I'll pay you back some–" she began, trying to push words through the suddenly narrow passage of her throat. 

"Never mind that," the other woman said, focusing her attention on pulling into a temporary parking space. "Frank is my son. Takes two to tango, and all that." 

__

(a sudden image of Ruth, her mother, young and smelling of fresh peaches. dark curls like some inverse angel's halo. 

'Don't be nervous, Dorie.' having already donned the wedding gown woven by two spiders. 'It's not so bad.' )

Presently, Dolores leaned over, ringed-hand resting all-too heavily on Naomi's shoulder. The touch was much softer than her voice, seemed to be speaking a totally different language. "Now, the clinic is just a few lots down, next to the Chinese grocery. I'm going to visit my sister in upper part of the city, and then maybe have my nails done."

__

(coral pink or poesy dust for your nails, Ma'am? how about a nice, blood red?)

"I'll be back for you in four hours, and then maybe we'll go for lunch. It can't take more than four hours, don't you think? I'll just wait if it's longer, but make sure you're here as soon as you can."

"Yes, Aunt Dolores," Naomi recited, head down, eyes on her white knuckles where she gripped her purse. Five hundred dollars is the going price, you see. 

"Well," Dolores sat back, and in the shiny, fake-wood dash board, Naomi could see that the older woman was also biting her lips, eyes shifting as if afraid to look this in the face. Unable to draw in another breath, Naomi pushed the door open and stumbled out into the bright street, nearly tripping over the frayed ends of her bell-bottoms. Regaining only a little of her balance, she moved quickly away, without turning to say goodbye.

Dolores sat in the car, door open and air conditioning running full blast. For a moment, she toyed with the end of her long braid, eyes as hard as any armor, before she reached over widely, and pulled closed the door.

#(#)#

An abortion clinic. An abortion clinic on a bright, yellowed California day; with the state license posted in the window and a little bell to ding'

(an angel goes to heaven!)

each time the door was opened. Inside, the walls and floor were white, hospital-pale, sterile with red chairs lined up and a magazine or two on the table. The front pages all mentioned something about Vietnam. Courage broken and grasped in each hand, Naomi drew a breath and came to stand before the window of the welcome desk, head bowed.

"Can I help you?" asked a receptionist, a slight, too-fresh faced blond woman who's nurses' cap was tilted a little to the side.

"Somebody better," Naomi said through dry lips.

"Beg pardon?"

"I'm sorry," she said a little louder, "I'm here for" (how did Dolores put it?) "the procedure."

The receptionist's smile was vaguely sympathetic, "How far along are you?"

"Three, four months."

"Alright," the blond smiled a toothpaste commercial smile–too many white teeth. She pushed a clipboard towards Naomi, "Just fill out these forms, and a doctor will be out to speak with you when you're done."

"Thanks."

**[Name? Naomi Jessica Sandburg.]**

__

(My mother's name is Ruth, and I'm Naomi, which is kind of a reversal, if you're familiar with the book that bares my mother's name.)

The air conditioner was humming just a little too, loud. Hard to concentrate.

****

[Age? 19.]

__

(All of nineteen and three months and two days. When I turned eighteen, I decided that I was a woman, and after all the birthday candles on my girly pink cake had been dowsed and tossed, dripping wax, into the trash, I took Frank's hand and told him that my first time out to be with someone I trusted. Someone who was my best friend.)

The little silver bell above the door cried, pushed open violently, ushering in an older man, hands gripping the shoulder's a dusty, twelve year old girl. They stood for a moment, just inside the doorway, the girl like a frozen cactus flower, until the man gave her a little prompt and Naomi looked away.

**[Place of residence?]**

_(So, anyway, Frank said he would be honored and he kissed each knuckle on my hand and we stole up to the attic and when we laid down on the old mattress there were billows of dust like fairy magic. The whole time we were laughing, trying to be quiet, because who knew when Dolores and Mr. Goldman would be home from playing bridge across the street?)_

**[Reasons for seeking an abortion? Do you have a preexisting medical condition the doctor should be aware of? Are you allergic to any medications? To any foods? How long have you been sexually active? Do you have an STD? Do you]**

_(Do you really want to do this?)_

It surprised Naomi, because one minute she was filling out the form, just trying to complete it–like an assignment in school, and then all the words were jumbling together, jumping like crazy Mexican beans and she thought, really thought, about what was going to happen after she put her pen down. The world was dizzy and this concept, this deed, was suddenly very real and clear to her (and she'd thought it had been real before!)–deadly, stark and true. Without really thinking about it, she stood on unsteady, sandaled feet, feeling like her bones were glass. The pen dropped with a blasting click' to the tile floor, rolling away and away, just like Naomi's consciousness, and she was going to faint, she was and then what would

_(god, god what am I going to do? Huh? Are you there God, cause I'm in a pinch, and you know, you know. Dolores said, God knows' so why the fuck don't you do something to help me here!)_

she do?

Blood teased her tongue from where she'd bit into her lip, and right where her gaze blindly rested–on the white, doctor's door–a shape began from pieces of shadow and the curious, blinding white of the room. 

A panther. A blue eyed panther, growling, pacing, tail twitching to some unseen beat.

_(Come on, Sandburg. Please don't do this to me)_

"I can't," Naomi said to the room at large–she'd thought the words and they had simply tumbled forth, but she found she didn't care. Unforgivingly, she tore the form from the clip board, pitching it in the waste bin and she retrieved the pen. Almost, it seemed, like some sixth or seventh sense, she felt the panther rub up against her as she returned the things to the secretaries desk; it seemed to purr, to vibrate warmth where there was only arctic fear in her bones. "I'm sorry," she blew the words hurriedly over her shoulder, as she ran back out into the real world, 

"I just can't do it."


	4. Song For Running Away

AUTHOR'S NOTES: As always, I must thank you first for taking the time to read this. I hope it's worth your while! ^_^ I haven't given up on this story... I've just been swamped by mid-terms. Evil things, those. Anyway, I want to thank Ahavia, April, Lady Bethia and Jadwol for all the kind words and support. May the Sentinel-and-or-Guide fairy leave happy thoughts under your pillows! 

This part is a little short, but I wanted to post it anyway, as a chapter break seemed natural here. Chapter five and six are in the works, believe it or not.

*beats the plot bunnies away from her ankles*

Feedback would make me delirious with joy-- really, it would.

-Meredith

================================

****

Cradle on the Water 4/6

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

================================

Whatever Ruth Sandburg had wanted in a daughter, Naomi was not it. She wasn't sure just when in her childhood she became aware of this, but the unspoken disappointment hung heavy, like a ripe peach, filled with sorrows. In a way, Naomi felt it gave her a power of sorts. They didn't want each other, but they were still stuck-- Ruth and Naomi, a reversal of the old Bible tale. Now, the young women felt her own new ripeness-- still rather-- abstract and wandered through the streets of San Francisco in a sort of hazy panic. 

(You will be found out.)

Time was a noose, loose around her now, but come one month or two, she'd start to show and then...

(And then, what will you do?)

Somewhere along the line, the biblical Naomi had changed her name

(you're changing, already) 

to something happier, something lighter, more free; but it had been a long time since Naomi herself had labored over the Tanauk, and she couldn't remember what it was. Something joyful, sunlight through glass-- as porcelain and delicate as she felt, pausing to gaze at her self in a department store window. Reflected over the fall fashions, the cardboard 'back to school' signs, she was still a child herself, all red hair and freckles and too many faults. 

_(What am I going to do?)_

For a moment or two, she fretted, as if she hadn't already made the decision, as if it wasn't written soul-deep and plain on the very body that had grown in her mother's womb. 

Ruth followed, and Naomi...

Naomi was a wanderer. 

And maybe that's what the mistake was after all; the naming, sacred in so many cultures, reduced to a birth certificate and a number in the hulking government machine. Naomi. Nay-oh-me. What a wonderful, terrible thing to say.

She wandered into McAlpin's, fingering this soft-knit baby pajamas, that miniature, duck-festooned bib. It was like picking clothes for a doll; all the little details, tiny shoes and hats and even baby bracelets, shiny and empty, waiting for names. Joshua, she tried out, almost unconsciously, Caleb. Noah? All old, firm Jewish names. Names her mother would have picked. 

_(Mother, sitting at the white-wood kitchen table, "Why do you do this to me child?")_

Manuel! Spanish, wouldn't they just die, Mom and Dolores and the Synagogue biddies? _(silently, written along her insides, "as if I'll even be here, come this time next year.")_ Hideki, Japanese; Rama, Hindu; Muhammad, Arabic; Louis-- superlative French! Frank Jr. for the man purported to be the father, or maybe 'Heaven', to be completely outrageous? Absently, Naomi curved her hand over the cradle of her hips. Robert, Richard, Aaron. Zach! Who knew? Dizzily, she considered simply rolling the die, like roulette or something, here's to chance and fate and... hey, how about Destiny? More of a girl's name, really... 

I'll do everything my mother didn't, Naomi promised herself, fix every mistake she made.

_(And make new ones of your own.)_

After a while, she went back out onto the summer-day street and played a game-- her favorite, one she hadn't played in a long time, because it made her feel all the more acutely the confines of her cage. Sitting the yellow grass near the interstate exit, she watched the cars zoom on and off the freeway. 

Where to? A silent question.

__

(Anywhere.)

#(#)#

Dolores pulled the car up tight against the sidewalk near the grocery, a four hour replay of herself, like a movie reel played backwards. Her eyes were somehow bright and shiny, marbles dipped in water, and she pushed open the door, motioning to Naomi. For a moment, the younger woman didn't move, continuing her silent support of the building she leaned against, chewing on apple as if daring it to choke her.

(If I were Snow White, I wouldn't so much as _look_ at an apple. Not after that.)

Finally, she moved, perching on the seat like a nervous bird, purse clutched in bone-white knuckles. 

"Good afternoon, my dear," Dolores said, purely pre-emble, and for once Naomi found the other woman crowed by the sight of her raised, red-ash eyebrow. She couldn't feel her face, was afraid to look in the mirror and see everything written there, plain as day. Her soul slid out of her skin when the 'Aunt' asked, "Is it done?"

Naomi scrambled inside herself, looking for her voice, "Uh-huh." The five hundred dollars was the weight of deceit, tucked into the lining of her purse. Creatively, perhaps meanly, "They gave me some pills to take, to prevent infection. Do you want to see them?"

Dolores' "No" was quick and defensive– it occurred to Naomi that she would not have known what to do if asked to produce the fictitious pills. Then, slowly, the words were written as if on the backs of her eyelids, in chalk. 'She doesn't even consider disobedience a possibility.' She drew her tongue back in her throat, to keep from giggling. She was high, giddy, a creature of magic– a total, unrepentant masquerade. 

"You know it's for the best, dear," said Dolores, leaning over to place a brief, dusty kiss on Naomi's cheek, like leaves on cold stone. It sat there, Naomi could feel it as Dolores hurried the car away from this, the scene of the crime, but she didn't dare wipe it away. Oddly, she found she didn't want to.

_(pictures shown at the women's rally. mothers, fine haired and almond-eyed, breaking their daughters' feet as their own were broken decades before. the scrunched, red faces of chinese girls, pleading mercy, weeping. finding only determination._

[but behind that...]

it's for your own good.)

Sometime after the highway lights and concrete pillars began to take on the look of a forest, she stretched out and, almost furtively, reached into the glove compartment. Spreading the map over her lap, she traced roads, looped around cities, states, lingering over words she liked. Sacramento– very Catholic; Alum Rock– mysterious; Salinas, like silver, an exotic mirage, and Gilroy and Stockton too old and heavy handed to be considered. Every so often, Dolores would glance away from the endless white and yellow dashes on the blacktop, smiling indulgently, as if Naomi was a child with a coloring book for entertainment. A bored teenager– definitely not mothering material.

She had no way of knowing that Naomi was already planning her escape. 

#(#)#

If Blair Jacob Sandburg had ever existed in Sunnyvale, California, he would have been born in a clean hospital, with doctors tipping Naomi onto her back like some child's toy-- 

(Weebles wobble but they don't fall down!)

her legs spread inelegantly. His name would not have, in fact, been Sandburg at all; while his mother had sweated and heaved, her left hand, gripping the hospital bed railing, would have shown the glint of a gold ring, and perhaps some tiny gem as well. Blair Jacob Goldman would be scrawled on his birth certificate, a son to carry the name of the father, washed up on a foreign shore. The first arms he would know would be Ruth's, 

_("Oh, Naomi's too tired just now")_

then Dolores'. He would be circumcised with all the ceremony, and there would be a party of decent size. 

_("Because, you know, a boy is nothing to be ashamed of when he's from a married woman.") _

His curls would be kept short, and he'd sit up straight and have his mouth washed out for saying 'damn' or 'shit' or even 'bugger'. He'd go to regular school with regular boys, and to Temple on Saturday, and to the park with his grandmother and dear aunt. He would live on 231 Lilly Road, where his mother had lived all her life and her mother before, until maybe one day a stranger in a uniform would come to stand in the doorway, smelling like the jungle and the word 'Vietnam'. Ruth and Dolores would watch anxiously as Naomi froze, looking at this familiar stranger, and she would run– not away, as she wanted to– but to his arms and he would say 'I missed you, honey', even though she hated to be called 'honey'. Or else there would be box, or dog tags, and a solemn funeral with Blair dressed in a tiny black suit and the whispers around Naomi– faceless –saying, 'shame, shame, a widow already'. Life would be like that, the background of a "Home & Garden" magazine, with Dolores and Ruthie's voices for narration, 'no, hold the baby like _this_', 'keep his hair short, what is he–a heathen?' and 'oh, you don't want to do _that_')

Of course, that wouldn't happen. Not now.

__

(Thank God. A colloquialism, a phrase, but also an action. Thanking God. Continuous, and present tense.)

'Be glad you don't exist here,' Naomi thought at the tiny, delicate creature curled up between her hips, 'you're invisible, you can flit down between them, safe in my shadow, and they won't touch you at all.' Part of her, the old voice hammered in since before she remembered, flashed words like 'stability' and 'heritage' at her, when she caught flashes of this future, lurking like ghosts in the hall. She began to get sick often, complaining of stomach aches while Dolores nodded her sly approval and Ruth fretted. She would lay herself out on that narrow, virginal bed, staring at a ceiling that held no answers. In her dreams, abstract paintings shifted, now an animal, now a man-- sometimes two-- running along side each other. Lupine and feline paw prints in the rain forest mud. She woke up only able to think, 'alright, alright already'; knowing she would have to step out of nothingness of Sunnyvale to a place where she and her baby could exist simultaneously, without one canceling out the other. She sat on the porch, looking down the endless, yawning length of Lilly Road, thinking how all her life she'd wanted to run and run until it wasn't Lilly Road any more at all, but some other road, leaning off into a horizon that stretched forever.

Another week passed and, though she ate less, she weighed more. 

Who knew it would be so hard to run away from home? 


End file.
